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Agreeing to settle a lawsuit filed by the National Rifle Association, the city of New Orleans promised this week to return hundreds of firearms seized by police from law-abiding citizens during the chaotic days that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Gun-rights groups took the city to task after National Guard soldiers and police officers confiscated weapons without a warrant or probable cause during the storm's aftermath. U.S. District Court Judge Carl Barbier hasn't signed the agreement yet, and no monetary award is in the settlement. The city agreed to give back the guns to their rightful owners via its Web...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The National Rifle Association and the city of New Orleans have agreed to settle a lawsuit over the seizure of firearms by police officers in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. A court filing Tuesday says the NRA and Second Amendment Foundation will drop the case if the city follows a plan for returning guns to owners who had them confiscated by police after the 2005 hurricane.

Since Hurricane Katrina, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now has fought to make sure that displaced New Orleanians can vote, return home, tell their stories and have a place to live. Now ACORN, the venerable 38-year-old social justice organization, faces the fight of its life over an embezzlement scandal and leadership crisis that hits Orleans Parish Civil District Court today at 9 a.m. In late May, the group's board was shocked to learn that the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke had stolen nearly $1 million from the organization and its affiliates eight years ago.

A New Orleans federal judge has sentenced a Slidell man in connection with a case where the man illegally wore a Navy uniform, complete with medals, at a wedding, according to U. S. Attorney Jim Letten.

Caracas, Venezuela Population: 3.2 million Murder rate: 130 per 100,000 residents (official) . . . The numbers also don’t count those who died while “resisting arrest,” suggesting that Caracas’s cops—already known for their brutality against student protesters—might be cooking the books. Cape Town, South Africa Population: 3.5 million Murder rate: 62 per 100,000 inhabitants According to the South African Police Service, most of the Cape Town area’s violent crimes happen between people who know one another, including a horrific case last year in which four males doused a female friend in gasoline and lit her on fire. New Orleans, United...

Archbishop Alfred Hughes on Thursday denounced a Metairie lawmaker's proposal to pay poor people to undergo sterilization as "an egregious affront to those targeted and blatantly anti-life." "Our lawmakers would do better to focus on policies that promote education and achievement to counteract poverty and the bigotry of low expectations," Hughes said in a statement. Hughes spoke out in response to a proposal by state Rep. John Labruzzo, R-Metairie, to combat poverty by offering poor women and men $1,000 to undergo reproductive sterilization and vasectomies. In addition, the lawmaker said he is considering whether to propose tax incentives for college-educated...

There’s much more to the story of Obama’s amended campaign finance reports than what Obama and the Obamedia will tell you. I will fill you in on what’s missing in a moment. What we have here, essentially, is Obama using a non-profit group called Citizens Services Inc. as a front to funnel payments to ACORN for campaign advance work.

Reaching out to help Ike evacuees is a neighborly impulse, but when New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin touted a non-existent discount on hotel rooms, he didn't help anyone. In fact, he ended up upsetting some evacuees who felt that their plight was being treated as a joke. Hotels can't get together to set a special rate -- that would violate federal anti-trust laws. Stephen Perry, president of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Association, said he made that very point to the mayor before a news conference last Thursday.

Mary Jane Bernard arrived at the Best Western French Quarter Hotel on Rampart Street on Friday morning with what she thought was a simple request. "When we got there, we asked for the Ray Nagin special, " said Bernard, a Baytown, Texas, resident who was evacuating in advance of Hurricane Ike with her sister. What she got, though, was a perplexed front desk worker and the opportunity to star in a scene replayed at least a few times Friday. In a news conference Thursday afternoon, Mayor Ray Nagin had encouraged Texas evacuees to book hotel rooms in New Orleans by...

The far-away, now-abandoned Bridge to Nowhere lately has taken center stage in the race for the White House. For an unbuilt span that never actually connected two cold spots, it certainly is generating plenty of heat. “The McCain campaign continues to repeat the lie that Sarah Palin stopped the Bridge to Nowhere,” Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton told the Associated Press Monday. “The only people ‘lying’ about spending are the Obama campaign,” McCain-Palin spokesman Brian Rogers shot back. “The only explanation for their hysterical attacks is that they’re afraid that when John McCain and Sarah Palin are in the...

Excerpt - Even as residents who fled the city ahead of Hurricane Gustav continued to return, Mayor Ray Nagin said Saturday that it appeared the city would need to start worrying about Hurricane Ike. Hurricane Ike grew to Category 4 strength Saturday and could head into the Gulf of Mexico by early next week, putting residents along the Gulf Coast on alert less than a week after Gustav made landfall in south Louisiana. Nagin told reporters he's worried about fast-moving Ike and about the wherewithal of residents who one week ago began leaving ahead of Gustav. Reactions of residents who've...

In the summer of 2007, I constructed a profile and analysis on Michael Moore that illuminated the sociopathic tendencies that encompass the actions of one of the most infamous documentary creators of modern times. Within the article, Michael Moore: A Criminal Profile, which was first released in the New Media Journal and then later around the world, I took careful pains to make sure that readers understood that Moore carries the tendencies of the sociopath while not accusing him of the crimes that some sociopaths actually commit. The thrust of the article was to introduce people to the moral wasteland...

(SNIP) "This is not Jefferson Parish's responsibility; it was dumped on us by the State of Louisiana at the last minute," said Bonano. "Obviously people at the state level were making decisions for us without even asking us. We're up to our eyeballs in issues right now trying to get these people out of here." (SNIP) "We thought that with my brother being disabled, this would be easier. But it was chaotic. Next time we'll use our own transportation." Holmes said she and 3,000 other people were housed in a vacant Sam's Club warehouse, where they slept on cots and...

Ike heading towards the gulf.

Those who love New Orleans say Hurricane Gustav is proof that the billions of dollars spent to protect the city and bring it back to life after the devastating 2005 storm season was worth it. But what if Gustav had been stronger, a category 4 instead of a 2, and hit the city directly instead of 70 miles to the west? Would it be worth the cost to rebuild New Orleans again if the storm caused widespread destruction as Katrina did? "That's a question that was there before and after (Hurricane) Katrina, and I think is going to come to...

The number of New Orleans evacuees at Fort Chaffee continued expanding as Gov. Mike Beebe visited the base and consulted with officials early Monday morning. New Orleans residents evacuated to Fort Chaffee out of the path of Hurricane Gustav numbered 2,308 Monday afternoon with around 200 more expected to arrive at the training grounds by the end of the day, according to Maj. Keith Moore, spokesperson for the Arkansas National Guard. Several New Orleans residents who arrived at Chaffee complained that the bus ride from their city was “miserable.” Tiffany Smith said during the nearly 24-hour transport, neither air conditioning...

NEW ORLEANS — Anxious evacuees across the country clamored to come home Tuesday after Hurricane Gustav largely spared New Orleans and southern Louisiana, but were cautioned to wait for the restoration of power and other critical services knocked out by the storm.

Is it really a hurricane, or even just a "tropical depression," unless a TV reporter in a hooded windbreaker is flopping around in the wind and rain like a landed flounder? Is it really a weather story at all unless the TV people can go outside in the storm and, while risking bodily injury, warn viewers that they shouldn't go outside in the storm and risk bodily injury? If so, Hurricane Gustav was a real storm: All of the cliches and hyper-theatrical tropes of TV hurricane coverage were at Category 5 yesterday.

http://www.maroonspoon.com/wx/gustav.html Live coverage...levee is failing 350 feet of wall falling apart as we speak...

Water Overtopping Industrial Canal.Live coverage on WDSU channel 6 or channel 361 on Direst TV.

BREAKING NEWS MSNBC staff and news service reports updated 21 minutes ago NEW ORLEANS - As Hurricane Gustav steamed toward the Louisiana coast early Monday, a top FEMA official warned that the surge will likely overtop levees and at least partially flood the city that was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Despite offering his ominous warning, Federal Emergency Management Agency Deputy Director Harvey E. Johnson said "we don't expect the loss of life, certainly, that we saw in Katrina." "But we are expecting a lot of homes to be damaged, a lot of infrastructure to be flooded, and...

Former Chairman of the Democratic National Committe Don Fowler and Democratic Congressman Don Spratt are caught on video laughing about the fact that a hurricane is about to hit New Orleans, to the political advantage, they suppose, of their party. You can draw your own conclusion about the moral stature of these people. Barack Obama is one of the worst. He tried to make political hay out of Hurricane Katrina as recently as Thursday night.

NEW ORLEANS: Marsha Williams always hesitated when mail arrived from the government, but after Hurricane Katrina she began to fear the letters. One notice warned that her apartment building could be shut down because the landlord had not repaired storm damage. She worried: What did all the legal forms mean? Was there more paperwork she needed to send in? But at age 51, Williams was embarrassed that she could not read much more than her own name and address. "I didn't get a lot of school when I was a child. I guess they didn't have enough to go around,"...

Why all the hoo-ha over Gustav? This has nothing to do with how serious the storm is/can be, but with all the media attention (never mind the political).

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- On a cigarette break from washing dishes in the French Quarter, Michael Kennedy swung open the door of Café Maspero, and the briny smell of raw shrimp followed him outside. A woman walks her dog down the streets of New Orleans, where most have fled in anticipation of Hurricane Gustav. A woman walks her dog down the streets of New Orleans, where most have fled in anticipation of Hurricane Gustav. "You gotta make as much money as you can, because when we shut down -- and we're gonna shut down -- that's it for a...

GUSTAV MAY MAKE KATRINA A FOND MEMORY Like the poor, hurricanes will always be with us and always have been. They’re not due to the myth of global warming or else how do we explain the Big One of 1938 which still stands as the most merciless storm ever to strike the East Coast? They’re not due to the wrath of God wreaking vengeance on the wicked any more than are droughts, cold waves, heat waves, and floods. They’re due to a capricious Mother Nature who spared us for two years following Katrina and now seems bent on compensating in...

NEW ORLEANS -- Residents who try to ride out Hurricane Gustav will be making the biggest mistake of their lives, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin warned on Saturday. Nagin Warns Of 'Storm Of Century'! Video "You need to be scared. You need to be concerned. You need to get your butts out of New Orleans. This is the storm of the century," Nagin said. Mandatory evacuations have been ordered for Westbank starting at 8 a.m. Sunday, and mandatory evacuations of the Eastbank will begin at noon. "Riding it out would be the biggest mistake you could make in your life,"...

On a plane from Denver to Charlotte following the Democrats' convention, I found myself seated behind former National Chairman of the Democratic National Committee Don Fowler and Congressman John Spratt of South Carolina. Their conversation was interesting to say the least.For example, they made fun of Sarah Palin for several minutes, Fowler calling her "Dan Quayle" on steroids and Spratt creatively describing her as "just terrible." They both agreed that, "Other than the simple fact that she's a female," she has nothing to offer.Then there was this gem of a moment from Fowler:   Click for Video So you see, it's...

Hurricane Gustav strengthened to a dangerous Category 4 storm Saturday, prompting officials to plan a special advisory and some Gulf Coast residents to leave town ahead of mandatory evacuations. Data from an Air Force reconnaissance aircraft indicated that Gustav's maximum winds have increased to close to 145 mph, making the already-deadly storm an extremely hazardous Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale.

U. of C. shunning poor patients? HOSPITAL DISPUTE | Obama's wife, 3 aides tied to plan to free up space BY TIM NOVAK AND CHRIS FUSCO Staff Reporters August 23, 2008http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1122691,CST-NWS-hosp23.article Sen. Barack Obama's wife and three close advisers have been involved with a program at the University of Chicago Medical Center that steers patients who don't have private insurance -- primarily poor, black people -- to other health care facilities... Obama's top political strategist, David Axelrod, co-owns the firm, ASK Public Strategies, that was hired by the hospital last year to sell the program -- called the Urban Health...

We just got a call from Devline Rossell, a charter captain based out of Venice, Louisiana. He was shopping in New Orleans to get some supplies before the arrival of Gustav (currently listed as a tropical storm that has left at least 22 dead in the Caribbean) and reported that the item most in demand was not food, clothing or shelter. “I just left a sporting goods store and you would think that the number-one selling item would be plywood or potable water or gasoline right now,” he said. “Apparently it is AR-15s and .223 ammo. I watched at least...

New Orleans is providing 700 buses to evacuate the elderly, the sick and anyone lacking transportation ahead of Hurricane Gustav. The city is expected to be hit some time early next week and officials are warning they will not open shelters. Officials are going street to street with bullhorns announcing the decision as a way of reaching all citizens. They will also institute a curfew that will lead to anyone on the street after a mandatory evacuation order being arrested.

Three years ago this morning, Hurricane Katrina roared ashore at the Mississippi-Louisiana line. It left a swath of devastation no mountain of statistics can describe fully: 1,836 dead; hundreds of thousands homeless; upward of $150 billion in property damage. That Katrina was the costliest natural disaster, by a factor of nearly four, in U.S. history only begins to tell the story. Katrina was "the storm," New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin would say later, "that most of us have long feared." For decades, scientists had predicted his city would slip beneath the waves in the 21st century from the combination of...

link only;)

Louisiana, Mississippi keeping eye on Gustav NEW ORLEANS -- As Friday's third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches, officials in Louisiana and Mississippi are keeping an eye on a storm named Gustav. The storm was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm after moving over Haiti but forecasters expect it to regain strength and move into the Gulf of Mexico in a few days. Long-range forecasts say the storm could be a major hurricane threatening the central Gulf Coast by Monday. In New Orleans, where thousands were stranded after Katrina hit and flooded most of the city, officials are making...

Gustav aside, preparations for the annual Southern Decadence party are underway today in the French Quarter. It is the first day of the five-day Southern Decadence celebration in New Orleans' French Quarter. The Greater New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau calls it a long weekend of parties, parades and gay pride, as well as one of the oldest and largest gatherings of gays in the country. This is the 37th Southern Decadence in New Orleans. Each year there are protests of the event, which this year is promoting attractions like "the most amazing group of porn stars ever assembled for...

NEW ORLEANS – It looks like history is repeating itself in the Big Easy: People have forgotten what happened after the last hurricane, four decades ago, that caused catastrophic flooding and again believe the federal government is constructing a levee system that will protect them. In a yearlong review of levee work, The Associated Press tracked a pattern of public misperception, political jockeying and legal fighting, along with economic and engineering miscalculations, that threaten to make New Orleans the scene of another devastating flood. Interviews with a variety of officials confirmed that many have not learned from mistakes made after...

It was way back in 1897 that 8-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon wrote a letter to The New York Sun asking an editor there if it was true, as her friends said, that Santa Claus didn't exist. If she were around today, addressing newspaper writers with her trademark naiveté, one imagines that she'd be asking if it's true that scandal is to New Orleans what Santa is to the North Pole. "Please tell me the truth," she would write, "Is New Orleans as bad as everyone says it is? Is it the worst place around?" Unlike Francis P. Church, the Sun editor...

Lies about the levee's in New Orleans!

On one of his frequent visits to New Orleans, federal recovery coordinator Douglas O'Dell delivered a bruising critique of the Nagin administration on Thursday, saying "there is growing frustration" in Washington with the speed, efficiency and competence of City Hall's efforts to manage the local recovery after Hurricane Katrina. O'Dell, who consults with dozens of federal, state and local agencies and troubleshoots regulatory logjams, said Mayor Ray Nagin's recovery director, Ed Blakely, often does not return his calls and seems to be operating under the premise -- erroneous, O'Dell thinks -- that a new presidential administration next year "will reload...

NEW ORLEANS - Signs are emerging that history is repeating itself in the Big Easy,

New Orleans has a far greater proportion of vacant homes than any other city in the country, due in large part to a lagging recovery in about a third of the neighborhoods that were badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina, new analyses show. The nonprofit Greater New Orleans Community Data Center released two reports Thursday, one of which used U.S. Postal Service data compiled in March to compare New Orleans with seven other American cities that have large inventories of blighted or vacant housing. When it comes to abandoned homes, New Orleans is in a class by itself, the report indicated,...

Was it self defense, or a danger to the community? It's a question many residents in the Faubourg St. John area are now asking after a recent shooting left bullet casings up and down their neighborhood block. Video: Watch the Story On Sunday, around 10:30 p.m., New Orleans Police Department officers say two hooded men robbed an employee of the Soprano's Meat Market at gun point at 2703 Ursulines Avenue. Store owner and brother of the employee, Rick Abraham, says surveillance video captured the entire incident. "They robbed him, beat him with the gun, threw him on the floor, and...

Today President Bush traveled to Orlando, Florida to speak to the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention. Unlike the whiney messiah who spoke to the VFW yesterday, President Bush didn’t hesitate to thank those have served and defended America in time of war. (Transcript) I know you share with me a deep love for America and an awesome pride in those who defend her. When I meet with our troops, they always inspire me with their sense of duty and honor.They are America's finest citizens. (Applause.) The President also spoke about the situation in Georgia, reinforcing the United States’ solidarity...

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Ask the man assigned to combat corruption and bureaucracy in New Orleans how the fight is going and he will tell you about his telephone problems. "I started last September and they only switched my phone lines on two weeks ago," said Robert Cerasoli, New Orleans' first-ever Inspector General in a recent interview. "Everything has been a battle since, everything has been a fight." < > "This is Louisiana," Cerasoli said with a shrug. < >

The state attorney general has opened an investigation into possible criminal wrongdoing by Mandeville Mayor Eddie Price and other city officials after St. Tammany District Attorney Walter Reed recused himself from the case. A report released earlier this week by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor found that Price accepted lavish gifts, including golfing trips to Pebble Beach, from companies that do business with the city.

NEW ORLEANS — The citizens of this scarred city have grown accustomed to promises of grand official projects that will infallibly transform life here but somehow never do. Their attention is diminishing. But not in the case of Karen Gadbois. She jumps in her car and checks up on the promises, driving for hours across the city, then blogs about the results on her kitchen table while her dogs yap around her. A few months ago, she discovered a city renovation program that was not actually fixing up houses. That activism might normally go down as well-meaning naïveté. Here though,...

Murder and attempted murder charges against seven New Orleans police officers, accused of shooting unarmed civilians on the Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina, were tossed out by Criminal District Court Judge Raymond Bigelow, who concluded that an Orleans Parish prosecutor tainted the secrecy of the grand jury process by showing a piece of testimony to another officer. "The violation is clear, and indeed, uncontroverted. The state improperly disclosed grand jury testimony to another police officer," Bigelow said, reading his ruling from the bench. The judge also dealt a blow to the prosecution on two other pending defense challenges to the...

Federal investigators collected documents Monday from the shuttered New Orleans Affordable Homeownership Corp., the city-chartered and city-financed nonprofit that ran a home-remediation program in 2006 and 2007. Officials arrived just before 10 a.m. at the agency's Poydras Street offices, on the 10th floor of the Amoco building. They declined to speak in detail to a reporter. "We're guests" at the office, one of them said.

Federal investigators this morning began examining documents in the Poydras Street offices of the shuttered New Orleans Affordable Homeownership Corporation, a nonprofit supervised and financed by Mayor Ray Nagin's administration that ran a home remediation program in 2006 and 2007. Officials arriving just before 10 a.m. at NOAH offices near City Hall, on the 10th floor of an office building at 1340 Poydras Street, declined to speak in detail to a reporter, as one of them said simply that "we're guests" at the offices. But they appeared to be carrying out a subpoena issued last week as part of a...